MUTILATED US NOTES RAISE MONEY LAUNDERING SUSPICIONS

US federal agents who seized more than 4 million dollars in US banknotes shipped from a famous money exchange house in Buenos Aires, Alfredo Piano, uncovered what they claimed was a cache of dirty money. Piano, 82, said many of the 100 dollar-bills were filthy and others had been ravaged by fire, water and even dogs.

Piano’s banknotes became the subject of recent scrutiny in federal court in Washington, where the bills were named defendants in a lawsuit called US v. 4,245,800 in Mutilated United States Currency. In it, the US alleged that the tattered cash that Piano’s Banco had tried to exchange at face value was likely the proceeds of criminal activity.

Piano argued that his bank’s role is to help Argentines get new greenbacks when their old ones get burned, ripped or, in some cases, sent through the washing machine. Hashing out whether the bills fell under the government’s figurative, criminal definitions of dirty and laundered, or merely Piano’s literal ones, took an 18-month legal proceeding and insights from Argentine money-hoarders, the Secret Service and an arm of the US government called the Mutilated Currency Division.

Mounting the defense of his clients’ money, Piano argued that Argentines are world-class stashers of cash dollars, and that misfortune will naturally befall some of the paper money that people hoard in mattresses, walls and holes in the ground.

The US government retires more than four billion notes each year, the Fed says. The cash often comes in from abroad, where half to two-thirds of US currency circulates, most of it in US$100 bills, it says. In October, the US introduced a new US$100 bill with additional security features.

Argentina, which the CIA says is the world’s 33rd-most populous nation, had at least 50bn in cash — about one of every nine dollars then circulating abroad, the US Federal Reserve estimated in a 2006 report.

“There’s nowhere to save dollars, so people bury them in the ground in a box, or put them in the attic,” Piano said. “I have a client who has a normal looking living room, but inside the bricks there are bills — he must have US$1 million or US$1.5 million stacked in there.”

Piano said “a huge amount of wet bills” came in after floods in La Plata earlier this year. He produced a sheet of paper showing handwritten columns listing dozens of customers and the amount each sought to exchange.

To read the complete article, see: Argentine case of possible money laundering with mutilated US dollar bills (en.mercopress.com/2014/01/15/argentine-case-of-possible-money-laundering-with-mutilated-us-dollar-bills)

Wayne Homren, Editor

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